Interview With Winnipeg Filmmaker Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin often dreams of his childhood home in Manitoba’s capital. His 2007 mockumentary film My Winnipeg is like a dream of the city, a surrealist concoction of autobiography and fantastical invention. It takes what it wants from waking life and tosses out the rest, as dreams tend to do. “The truth is relative,” reads the film poster.
So we asked Maddin for his true feelings about the city, but does that mean we should
we believe him? In our interview, he tells us about his detachment from the city since making My Winnipeg, the man who now haunts his childhood home, and the time he lied to Björk. Believe of it what you will.

My Winnipeg is very nostalgic, but you’ve never really left the city. How did you capture that feeling of longing for the locations you pass by all the time?
It’s strange. I’ve stayed way too long. I’ve sucked all the nostalgic flavour out of the city, like chewing gum that’s way past its spit-out date. But I think I crave stability, and I’m fiercely loyal to people and places. It’s like the Commandment, “Honour thy Father and Mother.” I’ve honoured everything from which I came. Not just my parents, but also my parent’s time and the time before that—the cities in which they dwelt. I don’t know why. Though making My Winnipeg did cure me of some attachment to the city.

Most of the apocryphal stories in My Winnipeg are ones you heard in your youth. As a grown man, do local myths and legends still fascinate you?Stories still come to me. I guess they come to everyone, but I just notice them more. I remember after making My Winnipeg, even more stuff came to me and I could have easily made further movies about the city. I thought at the time Winnipeg was mythically fascinating, but that I should include things that were also historically true to make it interesting for the other people. Each time I watch the movie, it inspires memories of my own hometown. In that way, it’s not just about Winnipeg.That’s what I hoped for. I think in a literal sense, most people live in or come from small towns and communities. We all have our own pasts. It’s a real thrill to narrate the movie live, in places like, say, Sydney or Berlin, and see it connect to different cultures and languages, and to see those people laughing at Winnipeg or with it.

Are you ever surprised by what is taken as true?
I remember screening the film in Iceland and Björk was in the audience. She asked me whether the “fact” about horse heads being frozen in the Red River was true. At first I thought, “I shouldn’t lie to Björk.” And then, I thought, “No, I should lie even more to Björk!” So, I piled on the lies.

Was Winnipeg ever really considered the coldest city in the world?
I read that when I was a kid. I think now it’s Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, if you look it up on the Internet. Let’s say it’s the coldest city in the Western Hemisphere, and that’s cold enough for me.

I wonder what My Ulaanbaatar would look like.
The Mongolian filmmakers would probably be mad at me for trying to steal their claim to fame.

Are there any places in Winnipeg that still inspire a curious feeling in you, like buildings you have always passed but never entered?
I finally went into the Thunderbird, this burger joint I’d be driving past for 57 years on the way to the family cottage. I’d been within 50 feet of it for years before finally going in. It looked so strange. It always seemed so modern to me as a kid, but inside it looked so old.

Do you have any early memories of seeing Winnipeg reflected back at you on television or in movies?
The great British director Michael Powell made a movie called 49th Parallel that I saw as a kid. It was about Nazi spies who crash-land near Hudson’s Bay, and make their way through Winnipeg. There’s a scene where the Nazis are hungry and look through the windows of some landmark Winnipeg eateries. I was really thrilled to see my hometown in the movie. It was confirmation, through emotion, that it existed.

When did you last visit 800 Ellice, your childhood home?
I dream of it frequently, but I went back about three years ago. The guy that lives there runs a tailoring shop where my mother and her sisters used to run a salon. He’s the same age as me, but from an area near My Lai, the site of the famous massacre in Vietnam. That happened when we were both 12.Now he’s sleeping in my bedroom where I got my first morning boner. He’s helping the community while I make wonky art movies. He’s the person I should have been.

This issue of Double Dot features content about both Winnipeg and its former sister city, Minneapolis-St. Paul. Any shout-outs to that area?
When I was a teenager, there were some girls I had mad crushes on from there, crushes strong enough to make me drive through blizzards. Then later, starting out as a filmmaker, I had a really good relationship with the Walker Art Center. I was invited to talk a lot of times. And as a baseball fan I’d make pilgrimages to Twins games.